Viola asked what he had against tractors.
“You let one tractor in and you’ll have a hundred. A festival of farm implements. Boring.”
“But who are we to impose our standards of boring?” said Ingrid. She was new to the Committee, she taught middle school English, she was a swing vote. “Isn’t the issue one of personal freedom?”
“Freedom doesn’t mean aimlessness. We can’t just sleepwalk through life. I’m sure you teach your seventh-graders that. Freedom demands structure. It’s our job to put on a parade, not pander to everybody’s little whims and predilections. A parade is supposed to be spectacular! Phenomenal!” Viola rolled her eyes. “Okay, but you need money for that,” she said. “Leland is not donating money this year. That’s five hundred dollars we don’t get to spend.”
“Leland wanted his gun safety class to march. All thirty-five of them. Just walk along, carrying shotguns. Said it would be a nice recognition of all the work they’d put in. So I said, ‘How about you put them in uniforms?’ No, he didn’t want uniforms. ‘How about they ride on a float or something?’ He suggested they ride on a schoolbus. Cheaper than making a float. I said, ‘If cheap is our guideline, then why bother to put on a parade? If mediocrity is the purpose here, then people can do that at home.’”
“You’re saying you think that his gun safety class is mediocre?” said Mr. Hoppe, ever the literalist.
“Let’s not start cutting corners on standards a few months before the parade,” said Clint. “You just create confusion. If you want to go back to how it used to be when anybody was in the parade who wanted to be, you can do that next year.”
“I liked that old parade,” said Mr. Hoppe. “Remember? We used to go around twice, so people who watched it the first time around could be in it the second time. And vice-versa. It was very sociable.”
Ingrid said she thought that sounded wonderful.
“Take it from me, it wasn’t,” said Clint. “It was a lot of people milling around in the street and people on the sidewalk watching them do it.”
“A lot of people have told me how much they miss the old parade,” said Diener.
“Fine. You want that, I’ll resign effective July 5, you can do what you want.” And he stood up and walked down the hall to the men’s room.
The next week Viola’s minutes read:
BUNSEN announced that, effective July 5, he will resign as Chair. TORS moved to accept his resignation and to express the Committee’s appreciation for his service. Approved unanimously.
What? Resigned? Not on your life. Okay, he had occasionally complained to the Old Regulars about the aggravations, but he had never considered resigning. Daddy had been Chairman of the Fourth of July back in 1965 when the tornado struck. His quick action getting people indoors under cover in the minute after the first bowling ball struck, before the other thirty-five rained down, was credited with saving lives. Daddy was, in fact, the Delivery Man of Delivery Day. He loved the Fourth and Clint loved his dad. The thought of giving up the Fourth was painful. But here Viola Tors had apparently ousted him in the minutes, printed in the Herald Star.
He said nothing. He thought of calling her and telling her off but decided to be cool. Ignore it. At the next meeting she was sitting in his place.
“Are you sitting there, Viola?” he asked.
“Did you want to sit here?” she said, accusingly.
“I don’t care where I sit. It isn’t important.”
“Then why make an issue of it?”
So he sat down in her old place. She called the meeting to order. When she called for old business, he said, “I see by the minutes of the last meeting that I turned in my resignation. Which comes as a surprise to me. But if that’s what all of you want, fine. It’s been a wonderful experience working with all of you and maybe it’s time I turned it over to someone else. I don’t want to but if that’s what you want, okay by me.”
He expected Mr. Hoppe or Father Wilmer to rise to his defense, but no. A great cloud of silence filled the room. Quiet breathing. A foot tapping.
“I clearly understood that you resigned,” said Viola. “You said so and you got up and left the room.”
“I went to the restroom.”
“Well, whatever. We all understood that you were resigning.”
“If that’s what you want, just say so.”
“Well, it’s hard to undo what’s been done,” said Viola. “Personally my only interest is the Fourth of July. I want to see it done right. That’s the bottom line.” She went on to enumerate his sins without referring to him personally or looking him in the eye—the wounded Knutes, the weeping Sextette, the people who loved Cowpie Bingo, the dog owners, etc., etc.—and her frizzy hair shook and her skinny fist popped the table. Viola had thrown tantrums as a child and now she was in the grip of another one.
“So you want me to resign?” he said.
“That’s how we voted,” she said. “It was unanimous.”
Nobody said a word. An awkward few seconds. Father Wilmer looked thoughtfully up at the ceiling and Mr. Hoppe stared at the table and Mr. Diener scratched his nose as if about to poke into a nostril and do some excavating. Clint thought maybe he should reminisce about his dad and the old days, make everyone smile, spread oil on troubled waters. What he wanted to say was, After a few months of Viola, you are going to miss me a lot. But you won’t get me back because I am seriously thinking about running for Congress, unbelievable as that may seem to you. I am about 65 percent decided. I may announce on the Fourth. I plan to win the election and when I do, I am out of here and you are going to wish you hadn’t done this. And then Viola cleared her throat and said, “Any other old business?” and that was that. The moment was over. Six years as chairman. Done. He was deposed because he had to pee. Evidently they were as sick of him as he was of them. He hoped there would not be a recognition ceremony after the parade and the presentation of some big chunk of Lucite for meritorious service. He guessed not.
4. ART
So they decided on Art’s Baits & Night O’ Rest Motel for the official Hospitality Suite instead of the rectory of Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility (offered by Father Wilmer). Insanity. Pure insanity. Art was the least hospitable person in town, his motel hadn’t had paying guests for several years, the No Vacancy sign was permanent—Art Grundtvig was 78. He was a mental case. For years Clint had expected to find Art on the front page of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. RURAL MAN SHOOTS FAMILY OF SIX: “THEY JUST GOT ON MY NERVES.” He had inherited the motel from a jovial uncle who loved to serenade his guests with “Oh What A Beautiful Morning” in a booming baritone, whanging on a tenor banjo, but Art was a prickly bachelor and a proud member of the Freedom Fighter Movement, sworn in blood to defend the Constitution against its enemies, including leftist judges, the media, and the electric company, which sent its agents onto private property to install listening devices. He posted warning signs outside the cabins, hand-lettered on plywood, such as NO METER READERS ON THE PREMISES. THIS MEANS YOU. TRESPASSES BY GAS OR ELECTRIC EMPLOYEES WILL RESULT IN DRASTIC ACTION. NO IFS, ANDS, OR BUTS. DON’T SAY YOU WEREN’T WARNED. THAT IS AN OUTRIGHT LIE!!!! The casual visitor, seeing the big neon Motel sign, pulled into a yard with an old silver bus parked in tall weeds which Art was fixing up as a getaway vehicle and a string of six cabins sheathed in pale blue plastic siding and picnic tables nearby and big signs beside the doors: NO FLAG DESECRATION ON THE PREMISES. YOU WANT TO TEST ME, GO RIGHT AHEAD—IT WILL BE YOUR LAST TIME. ANY DISRESPECT TO OLD GLORY BY WORD OR DEED WILL RESULT IN IMMEDIATE EXPULSION AND CONFISCATION OF PERSONAL PROPERTY. NO EXCEPTIONS. NO BOO-HOOING THAT YOU “DIDN’T REALIZE” IT WAS DISRESPECT—HA!!!! I’VE HEARD THAT ONE BEFORE AND AM NOT FALLING FOR IT. IF YOU ARE NOT A 100% LOYAL AMERICAN, YOU ARE NOT WANTED HERE. There were other warnings posted on the grounds, NO HONKING, NO PARKING, NO HUNTING, NO PEDDLERS, and on the side of the garage a big sign, GOOD MEN GAVE THEIR LIVES FOR THIS COUNTRY. I WILL TOO. DON’T PUSH ME. And if, despite the
prickliness in the air, you should decide that you wanted to rent a cabin and you went to the main house and the door marked Office, you saw a sign there: BEFORE KNOCKING, READ FOLLOWING: DO NOT ASK TO BORROW (1) MATCHES, (2) TOILET PAPER, (3) CONDIMENTS OF ANY KIND, OR ASK TO USE THE TELEPHONE OR TO WATCH TELEVISION. I DO NOT HAVE TIME TO CHITCHAT WITH GUESTS. I AM A CITIZEN SOLDIER ON ACTIVE DUTY IN DEFENSE OF THE GREATEST COUNTRY ON EARTH AND DON’T YOU FORGET IT. THE MANAGEMENT
And if you knocked on the door, you met a skinny old coot with tusks of nose hair an inch long and enormous foreboding eyebrows and a ponytail and his khakis hitched up under his armpits and an unmistakeable Smith & Wesson revolver in his belt and he told you that the motel was shut down for remodeling, and he closed the door in your face.
But Viola felt sorry for Art. She said he’d suffered a concussion when a dog jumped out of a tree on him, a dog he was training to hunt squirrels. She proposed paying him $500 for use of the motel for two days. “Why two?” said Clint. Because it’d take a day to clean it. Clint pointed out the fact that Art was armed and dangerous, Viola just pooh-poohed him. “I’ve spoken to Art and he is going to be in Montana visiting his niece, and he’s happy for us to use it.”
“Art is insane. He calls himself the Resistance. He stores boxes of rations up there. Tents, ammunition. He thinks the power company is going to blow him up in his sleep. He thinks the government is getting ready to take over the country.”
But the Committee was feeling their oats. They had deposed the Tyrant and now they voted to dwell in the House of the Lunatic, 3-2 in favor (Father Wilmer had left the room to smoke a cigarette) and there it was. And Viola looked around and said, “All in favor of adjournment sina die?” and there was a murmur of Ayes and she said, “Meeting adjourned.”
“Viola,” he said. “I’m still chairman until July 5 and it’s the chairman who adjourns the meeting. Not the treasurer.”
“If you want to sit here and talk to yourself, fine,” she said, rising. “The rest of us are going home.”
5. DADDY
Viola was a vexatious person. He had known her all her life and he didn’t need to tap her knee with a mallet or give her the Rorschach test, she was screwed up, just like everybody else. You learn that in a small town. There is no normal. Viola’s daddy ran away with Viola’s teacher when Viola was 11. He was parked outside school when Viola came out the front door and then Mrs. Samuelson came out with a cardboard suitcase and got in his car and Viola never saw either of them again. She never got over it. People never get over things. And then the pussywillow incident pushed her over the edge.
So he was ousted. That was the thanks you got for six years of hard work as Chairman. Years of worrying about the damn Living Flag, the picnic, the fireworks, and liability insurance. You sat around a cold linoleum-top table and tried to fend off Mr. Hoppe who wanted to bring in a chainsaw-sculpture contest and a motorcycle rally, and you stiff-armed Father Wilmer who wanted a sunrise ecumenical service by the lake, and you parried Viola who had a dozen picky questions about procedure. And then somebody wanted their nephew’s band The Atomic Tree Toads to play in the stage show and somebody whose old uncle could recite from memory the 87 counties of Minnesota in 25 seconds.
In Clint’s childhood, the Fourth was big and brassy with precision marching bands and troops of horses with riders in gaudy headdresses holding banners and plenty of flash and sparkle. Daddy was the impresario. Daddy hired Dave the Diver who plunged thirty feet onto a wet sponge, and brought in the Hooper Bros. Carnival with the Ferris wheel and the Spinner that pinned the riders flat to the rim as it spun and flattened their faces so they saw stars, he loved the roar and the rumble, the hoopla, loved jazz—“coon music,” he called it, and Clint had to tell him not to use that word—Jelly Glass Mortenson and His Hot Pickles—“The Mud Room Stomp,” “The Slow Dog Drag,” big hits. Daddy was a showman at heart and he loved carnival rides, fire-eaters and pole-sitters, the Wild Man from Borneo, chickens who parachuted from a tower, a man who played guitar hanging by his heels and could talk backward and belch the entire alphabet in one expulsion of gas. Daddy exhibited Donald and David, the Minnesota Twins conjoined at the hip, famous for the fact that they hadn’t spoken to each other in twenty-three years—people paid 50 cents admission in hopes of persuading the men to make up—“Come on! Just look at him! Put your arm around him!”—but the men, who were short, thick-necked, dark-browed, thin-lipped, just glowered at the customers and told them to mind their own business. Daddy exhibited Herman the Human Lightning Rod, struck seven times by lightning. He was a large man, slow on his feet, but nonetheless—seven times? What was the message there? The Human Lightning Rod had not lost his faith in a beneficent God: in fact, he had gospel tracts printed up, “Struck By Lightning—Still Praising The Lord.” On the other hand, he sold the tracts for 35 cents apiece. And there were the Ancient Aztec Midgets, four small brown persons who sat solemnly, blinking, as a swarthy man lectured on their ancient culture. Clint hung around and absorbed it all, saw the sadness of the razzle-dazzle, how thin the gaiety was, the empty faces of the clowns, the loneliness of the drum major, and once saw Daddy kiss the contortionist, a slender bun-headed Mexican woman in gaudy oriental pantaloons, kissed her on the mouth hard, then slipped between the tent flaps with her. Clint had seen her perform. She worked on a table, lean and brown, in trousers and a very skimpy bra that you kept hoping would come off. She could tie her legs in a knot behind her neck and do the same with her arms and after demonstrating these grotesque entanglements, she brought out a glass jar that appeared to be about one-third her size and she simply folded herself into it and an assistant rolled it around for your inspection and then she popped out and took a bow, the bra still on. Clint was 14. He imagined Daddy on a table and the Mexican woman entwining herself around him. The thought almost burst inside of him and he cried himself to sleep that night. He knew it was wrong but he kept Daddy’s secret.
It was the first enormous secret of his life, Daddy’s love for Bonita. He knew he should tell but he did not tell.
Daddy had wanted to bring in a hoochie-kooch show called “Puss ’N’ Boots,” two girls who strutted around in their underwear. “Some people want to see that type of thing, so why not?” he said. But the town got wind of it and Daddy had to lie and say he had no knowledge of the nature of the thing—he thought it was a kiddie show. “It’s only human nature to want to see a couple fine young women dance,” he said, “but some people are opposed to human nature.”
Grandpa started the Ford dealership in 1919 and Daddy took it over though he knew nothing about cars whatsoever, he was a snappy dresser and favored seersucker suits and red bow ties and hats with brims. A big white straw hat and a big gold-toothed grin. He liked to pretend to pull his thumb off and then hold out his little finger and when you pulled, he let out a fart. He loved the Sunday comics, Jiggs and Maggie, Little Iodine, Gasoline Alley, and he smoked a pipe like the dads in comic strips and had a mustache too. Daddy was a deacon of the Lutheran church but he was no more Lutheran than Ramon Navarro was. He used Jergens hand lotion and Swank cologne. He came home from church on Sunday and sang “It Ain’t Necessarily So” to irritate Mom and fixed himself a gin martini and a plate of Ritz crackers with deviled ham and put Frank Sinatra on the turntable and got a dreamy look in his eye. He was thinking about his Mexican contortionist Bonita. When Clarence took over the Fourth of July he found payments to Bonita of $300 a year for ten years, the only performer to get that kind of dough—twenty bucks was more like it—and he asked Clint, “What gives?” Clint said, “Bonita was a charity case. Six kids and her husband was a trombonist. Dad took pity on her.” Which wasn’t true. She was Dad’s sweetie. He kept a picture of her in his desk drawer, among the Ford brochures. She wore leopard-skin tights and was doing the splits.
After Daddy died, the Fourth took a dive. It was Open House for anybody who wanted to trudge four blocks with a flag in hand. No more bands and circus wagons. Too expensive. C
larence ran the show and Clarence was unable to say no. Clint said it easily. No. That’s all there was to it. No. And then they said, Oh, and then they went away. But Clarence was too good-natured to tell people to please dress up, it’s a Parade for God’s sake, so the parade went on as a motley procession of snot-faced kids in paper tricornered hats waving sticks, anybody with a pickup truck, maybe with a couple elderly dogs and a sullen teenager holding a small flag. Ridiculous. When Clint took over, he cleared out the dogs and raised the money to bring in quality parade units and culled the geezer honor guards and the minor royalty (Miss Particle Board, Miss Rutabaga Days, Miss Nut Goodie, Princess Louise of Processed Cheese) and the Science Fair winners and the kazoo band and the 4-H’ers leading their heifers. It was the Festival of the Dullards, the Procession of Geeks and Nerds, but nobody wanted to say anything, so Clint did the dirty work, because it was his job to, and now they were all mad at him.
6. DNA
On April 11th, the day Clint Bunsen turned sixty, two months before he was overthrown as Chairman of the Fourth of July, he peed blood in the toilet and without a word to Irene went off to a urologist in St. Paul to find out why. The doctor was a tall young man with thinning hair and a restless leg who seemed very enthused about urology. He had Clint drop his drawers and grab hold of a brass pole and bend over for a digital examination of the prostate that seemed to include the kidneys and pancreas and perhaps the lower half of the left lung. Clint could feel that left leg jiggle as the finger in the rubber glove probed his innards and the doc murmured and said, “Steady now” and “Almost done” and “You’ll feel a little pressure now” and “Don’t jump, hold steady” and “Take a deep breath and hold it” and “Cough” and “Okay, just about done now” and finally it was over. While Clint caught his breath, the doc said, “We’re discovering that the key to all of this is heredity” and he recommended that Clint have his DNA checked. He gave him an article from Genealogy Today about DNA testing and how a woman in New Jersey had found she was a descendant of Henry Thoreau. You just sent a swab of saliva to a lab in Phoenix along with a check for $140. The doctor had a swab available. So Clint paid up and the lab report came back the next week, saying he was less than half Norwegian, some Finnish, some Welsh, and almost half Spanish.
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